November

the night is longer black automobile hood tattooed with
constellations the digital clock’s red numbers at
2:34 a.m. Nevada salt flats a cyclone fence in headlights spume
from an ancient sea it could be snow strewn across the sand the
highway toward Fallon the night is a remnant of an
ancient lake in eastern Oregon’s high desert the cold ache of
basalt cliffs the Milky Way adrift above the barn & the power line
owls on a church bell owls in a dead gray apparition of
cottonwood an owl exploding from a pasture just beyond the
headlights the night is longer the Time Zone Bridge a-
cross the Salmon River in a thick rain a movie theater black-
out a hotel room in Roseville & soup in a Chinese restaurant in the
rain in a strip mall a bass guitar a bass guitar the night is longer e-
lectric violin a cyclone fence in headlights the apparition of
tumbleweeds tangled in the fence wire sand & spume & a cold ache
the night is longer & filled with dashes & numbers I have to
keep moving a farmhouse with defunct electric furnace I
have to keep moving a glass guitar slide the thick rain the
windshield tattooed with headlights I have to keep
moving the sparks of snow igniting to freezing fire in the Sierras black
pines & trestles the night is longer an empty infinite rearview mirror
I have to keep moving an apparition of Russian olives an
apparition of salt lakes an apparition of a UP
freight’s headlight traveling south there's nothing else

Jack Hayes
© 2010

Don’t forget: you can purchase my book of recent poetry, The Spring Ghazals, at this link.  You can also stay updated on news about the book, as well as tuning into virtual readings & posts about the book’s back story (& more) on my dedicated The Spring Ghazals blog.

Union Pacific #11

I’d had enough lonesome blues the over-
cast June sky the mountain ridges
east & west bruising the horizons the
highway itself for that matter then

the sky turned liquid in an instant
& it was June as I said the rainy season had
ended in the high desert I’d had enough
blues & greens the sagebrush & bitter-

brush reflected in a swollen irrigation
ditch running north-south as I was running thru
time & memory north of Burns Junctions’
deserted pink & green gas station & café

I'd had enough colors unlike the gray
shades in memory the improvised moment
each time I live it again somehow different a
blue turning gray the windshield wipers’

rhythm a green sage pasture a red car a-
head on its way to Nevada too there’s nowhere
else to go the memory turning gray the
black power lines almost solid

I’d had enough lonesome blues a 100
miles north of Winnemucca each time
I live it again somehow different the
highway itself almost deserted


Jack Hayes
© 2010

[The Union Pacific series is still moving on, tho slowly. If you’d like more information about my recent poetry, please check out my blog, The Spring Ghazals. That blog is devoted to my recently published collection of the same name. You can purchase The Spring Ghazals (the book, not the blog!) at this link.]

Union Pacific #10

A green sign reading “Nebraska the
    good life” pocked with bullet holes the static
        scars the power poles trace east-

ward a boarded up service station ex-
    hausted March snow in dormant grass a
        sky you couldn’t 

touch but if you could it would be cold dripping
    slate not dripping exactly the frozen
        fog inert for all practical 

purposes the gas station’s white metal
    siding oxydizing at a geologic pace the
        gravel lot gashed by tires be-

low the stone Our Lady of Peace
    statue’s petrified outstretched gesture the
        semis ascending west to Cheyenne one
 
red cab one silver cab one blue cab 
    I’m headed the other way but not yet
        I’ll stop another place for the night but not yet
       
in downtown Pine Bluffs Wyoming a yellow
    Union Pacific caboose parked on a 
    siding behind a cyclone

fence hasn’t moved in decades
    a sort of  peace but
        you couldn’t touch it

the junkyard sprawl behind the
    statue’s back the
        power poles’ quantum motion


Jack Hayes
© 2010

[To see other poems in this sequence, please click on the "UP Poems" label]

Union Pacific #9

Somewhere amongst star shards &
                        volcanic outcroppings I couldn’t
see against a 5:00 am November
sky the fm evaporated

it was east of Jordan Valley it
didn’t happen all at once the
signal dispersed across 
depths & distances & ghostly
sagebrush in the headlights almost
100 miles from daybreak
                        a diner’s unlit windows
dark in the darkness

fractured constellations broken yellow
line invisible
                          cattle moving across the rangeland
a sodium light a semi truck’s
enormous exhalation
          a broken yellow
line the star shards south a-
bove California a
          stone pinging the windshield a
              star fragment chip the
distance between constellations
I could hold that in my hands


Jack Hayes
© 2010

[To see other poems in this sequence, please click on the "UP Poems" label]

Union Pacific #8

Fragile white sky
            electric wire scars a
black crow scratching grit in frozen
gravel a black guitar case a
            nickel chrome guitar inside it my
                    lungs white fragile scarred &
shattering in ice the sky will shatter
            someday but perhaps not this morning it’s
                    19 degrees in Rawlins Wyoming
the massive frozen creak of Union Pacific
cars inching along the siding un-
                    certain atavistic yellow a
black backpack a black baseball cap a
pair of clip on sunglasses the
            slivers of grass white &
broken across the embankment below the
            siding the sky doesn’t
shatter I’m short of breath the
            car’s loaded I’m going back some-
place I’ve never been the petrified
freight cars & locomotives hulk   
            waiting but the white sky won’t
shatter we will
            say goodbye
            say goodbye
            say goodbye

Jack Hayes
© 2010
 
[To see other poems in this sequence, please click on the "UP Poems" label]

Union Pacific #7

A gray board-&-batten shack in Owyhee
            sagebrush in a drizzle no one’s in-
                    side hasn’t been for years two
empty windows barbed 
            wire fence strung on weathered splits lining the 
ridge southward

            What’s anyone else about
at this moment or at this moment
            a tanker truck downshifting up an eastbound grade three
Harleys churning a mist on US 95
                        a stone gray sky

            anyone in California anywhere
                    under a lemon sun or
Pittsburgh under a lemon sun or Bozeman
                        where I don't know anyone
            under a lemon sun there was always a lemon
sun when I tried to look there are

                    two empty windows framed by gray
boards
            a power pole with no wires connecting it
                        elsewhere the desert
dripping astringent green in this damp May
                    slate gray sky awash in crows


Jack Hayes
© 2010

[To see other poems in this sequence, please click on the "UP Poems" label]

Union Pacific #6

Inverted white air white-blue snow con-
gealed on concrete the sense of swimming under
    an ice sheet at 6,000 feet
& where have those distinct moments
        gone to in space &

frozen fog & frozen wrought iron
gestures
            & black & white freight trains
on the plaza’s historical markers   
        those distinct snowdome moments

a store window window-shopping
    a scarlet cowboy shirt a wooden cross
pinned with a tin star en-
            circled with rusted barbed wire
    this is what I wanted to say when the sun came up

once upon a time when time was liquid &
chromatic in
    every direction
the canteloupe glow over I-79 in a June driving
east by northeast but it’s this
    March in Cheyenne in gray-white air
a row of skateboards & a Dark Side of the Moon
        t shirt & my reflection
    in plate glass framed by bricks in-
   
verted white air white-blue snow con-
gealed on concrete
    have I gone into time in a paradox a
    wooden cross pinned with a tin star
the Union Pacific depot
        graystone in frozen fog a galloping
horse statue hulking oxidized geometric
    & no yellow freight trains in sight


Jack Hayes
© 2010








[To see other poems in this sequence, please click on the "UP Poems" label]

Union Pacific #5

OK—I said I needed to write some poetry.  I did.  My good friend B.N. tells me that the Union Pacific poems are really all parts of one long poem; I think she’s right—actually, I think I thought that all along, but I needed to hear her say it anyway.  But I’ll keep posting them separately, as they come.  I’ve added the label “UP Poems” for those who’d like to read the earlier ones, tho I should note that “Union Pacific #1” has been significantly revised since either of its appearances on the blog.


Hope you enjoy this.


Union Pacific #5

Blue sky chrome clouds wind
                turbine’s jagged cursive in an east wind the
cast iron mesas there are no more
similes a relentlessly

blue sky a sky-blue postcard
              “wishing you were here”
chrome cloud thoughtballoons rolling a-
              above Elmore County’s

concrete overpass bridges & wooden trestles a
UP freight rolling rolling east along
                            rangeland & grazing
black angus cattle March 2010 (a

wooden trestle climbing down the Sierra
Nevada’s pine ridge granite tectonic
                            plates March 1996 a
Toyota van rolling east of course
toward Johnny Cash in Reno I
sat in the back a simulacrum without
words a pack of
              American Spirit smokes going up in

chrome cloud thoughtballoons
“wishing you were here”

(a wooden trestle south of Charlo’s
                            emerald wetlands & cattails
“where the buffalo roam” June 2010 a
flatbed truck hauling beeboxes
   
“wishing you were here”

I’m rolling across Utah’s stateline al-
ready too late to do anything about it (this
   
jagged cursive this implacable sky this
              cold-hearted freight this slate gray inter-
                            state this inescapable postcard

Union Pacific #3 & #4

OK, so this is the week of me pre-empting things! I know I’d promised to post another Musical Snafu story, & don’t worry: I will do that soon. But in the meantime, these two newest poems in the slowly continuing Union Pacific series were “burning a hole in my pocket,” so to speak, so here goes.

Hope you enjoy them.

Union Pacific #3

All moments past are skating along the blacktop the
white timothy grass in the headlights the exhausted
patches of March snow granular along the shoulder the
stark abrupt eruption of a great horned owl from the
pasture grass a looming ghost in the headlights
                in other time zones friends already in
the midst of it
                I’m trying to reach them thru the wisps of
fog along the Weiser River the red iron canyons the
luminous guardrail the great horned owls eruption all
moments past skating along the
                                                      blacktop high tension wires
massed over the trailer houses & bare
locust trees
        in other time zones in other times
distance the wheels can’t cover skating a-
long the blacktop all these ghosts e-
        rupting out past the headlights


Union Pacific #4

Snake River sunrise thru cross-hatched
            locust branches
                                          a glint off
the steel bridge a glint of power lines the
Union Pacific headlight 15 miles back the
junkyard’s weathered wooden fence
              salvage
a 1950’s Chevy marooned along the
              Payette River bird sanctuary south-
east of cliffs exploding at twilight into swallows
              except it’s dawn now can’t you see it
salmon-flesh sunrise above the
              Snake River I’m crossing & crossing
again the salmon-flesh mosaic waters
              rippling under power lines I am
driving east out of foggy night the
moon traveling east after moonset under-
neath the world the
Union Pacific headlight I
              want to go home on the morning train


Jack Hayes
© 2010

Union Pacific #1 (revised) & Union Pacific #2

OK, now there are two of them....

Union Pacific #1

landscape at 8,000 feet the rocks’ iron bones the
cranial frigid mesas the wind turbines off
kilter quixotic swoosh a
freight train skating across the tableland west of
Cheyenne be-
tween the sagebrush & the fog & cell towers a
tourist log cabin advertising wi fi espresso Native American
gifts
a yellow locomotive skating a
line of rust orange hoppers hauling coal &
graffiti west the
pump jacks’ atavistic nods grazing for natural gas
I will always be lonesome & the radio only broadcasts static
at this elevation
                                    Laramie in a blue fog light has dis-
appeared from the rearview how many miles back a copper
bust of Lincoln hulking over the highway I will always be
lonesome at this elevation
                                                        a freight train skating across the
great divide the cold grinding of couplers this morning at
19 degrees at the Rawlins’ siding I will always be
traveling thru time between the blue blue fog & the
sagebrush & a series of semi-trucks clattering &
whooshing over the great divide
                                                                    which is lone-
someness made stone & wind & a longing for a
home amongst the fog & freight trains


Union Pacific #2

shattered glass sunrise across the Snake River
scarlet broken an osprey’s nest on a phone pole an
aluminum boat a bridge on concrete piers an
island
                    the sky yellow the clouds gray the
birds black against the horizon in unison
telepathic      purposeful      rippling
shattered glass sunrise
                    dispersal
onion skins scattered along the road south of
Annex, Oregon
                                  the Snake River’s
scarlet facets & heartbreak ripples
yellow sky underlined with birds
                                  a phone pole
an aluminum boat I am traveling in various
& contradictory directions west & east a-
cross a shattered river under
                    this shattered sky

Jack Hayes
© 2010